John W. James

Where were you when I needed you?

The saddest question we ever hear is, "Where were you when I needed you?"

That's what people ask when they find out what we do in helping grievers. We're presenting helpful and accurate information on this site, at the time you need it most, with the hope that you'll never need to ask that question.

It's an honor and a sad privilege to be addressing you, knowing that each of you has recently experienced the death of someone important to you. We also know some of you are reading this because of your care and concern for someone who is confronted by the death of someone important in their life.

We bring our personal experience in dealing with the deaths of people who were important to us, and our professional know-how in helping grievers for more than 30 years. We'll help you distinguish between the "raw grief" that is your normal and natural reaction to the death, and the equally normal "unresolved grief" that relates to the unfinished emotions that are part of the physical ending of all relationships.

A basic reality for most grieving people is difficulty concentrating or focusing. With that in mind, we asked Tributes.com to print our articles in a large type font to make them easier to read. Sharing our concern for grieving people, they agreed.

Ask The Grief Experts

“How can I tell them I love them when they are not here?” (Published 5-24-11)

Q:

Anonymous from Florida writes:

Will I get over losing my ex, friend, grandma and grandpa, and if I do, how will I feel? How can I tell them I love them when they are not here? Why do I blame myself for my grandma's death?

A Grief Expert Replies:

Dear Anon,

There are a whole lot of questions strung to together in your note. We'll try to respond to as many as we can.

In some of our earlier articles and Q/As we addressed the idea that “getting over” implies forgetting. You will never forget people who were important to you, so we want you to use a different idea. We want you to learn how to grieve and complete your relationship to the pain and unfinished emotional business that attaches to all losses.

We cannot predict how you will feel when you do the work that will help you feel more complete, but almost every one of the 500,000 people we’ve helped, has reported that they feel much better after doing the work of Grief Recovery. They can still feel sad and miss the people who are no longer here, but they usually don’t feel pain. They also get to feel the joy of remembering their people—without those memories turning painful.

“How can I tell them I love them when they are not here?” That's a great question. Because most of the people we help are dealing with the death of someone important to them, almost all of the things we help them say cannot be said directly to the person who died, as it would if you were talking to a living person. The process of what to say and how to say it is outlined in The Grief Recovery Handbook.

We cannot answer your last question about why you might blame yourself for your grandma’s death. You’d have to send us another note with a little more detail about how she died, and maybe we can help you.